Fic Talk > General Discussion
Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
RokofAges75:
For those who write in Google Docs, what's the longest story you've written as one doc without breaking it up?
I'm up to 287 pages/113,448 words in MBK, and it's definitely getting slow to load, especially on my Chromebook. Tonight I was typing, and it suddenly froze up, and when it unfroze, it had erased the entire story except the two words I was trying to type. 😳 I must have accidentally hit the keyboard shortcut for Select All or something. Thank god for the undo button and version history. I was able to get it back by undoing, but it scared me for a second. I would rather keep the whole story in one document as I'm writing it then start a new doc, but I may have to break it up if it keeps glitching and getting slower. The longest story I've written solely in Google Docs was A Heart That Isn't Mine, and that one was already divided into "parts" of ten chapters, so I just made each part its own doc until I was done with the story and then combined them all into one. But this one doesn't have that natural division point. I guess this will be an experiment for me to see how long I will let it get before I feel like I have to break it up because I still have a ways to go. That is one thing I like about Word better - it works well even with super long documents. Broken, BMS, and Song for the Undead can't even fit into one Google Doc; I had to upload them in parts to Google Drive because it couldn't handle documents that size LOL.
nicksgal:
That's awesome that you're feeling inspired to write in the mornings! I'm too much of a useless human to write pre-coffee.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 12:45:17 AM ---I love three-day weekends! I wrote almost 4,000 words today and finished Chapter 26. Has anyone else had a productive weekend?
--- End quote ---
Same! I skipped Friday because of work/the football game, but Saturday I started going back to work on PDemons and was writing a little conversation between Nick and Howie where Howie talked about how Nick used to skulk around the palace, sitting on ledges to watch people below him and I nearly died laughing thinking about it. So I decided I wanted to add a scene in the beginning of the OF version of PBox where Nick did just that... but I had to write part of the chapter before it to do so. Anyway, I spent a good two hours painstakingly deciding on a new name for Howie, since I couldn't keep writing "["Howie"]" if it was the chapter where he revealed his name (and actually ended up picking Brian's new name during the process as well). Then I ended up writing a little over 6200 words Saturday evening to Sunday night (and sleeping of course). But good news, this means I'm about one chapter and four scenes away from having the first eight chapters of the OF version done or... some semblance of penned anyway.
This has been happening to me a lot lately, actually. I ended up finishing my Brian chapter of my novella because I was trying to get into the groove for my Brian scene in 00Carter. (Is this a spoiler? I'm sorry! I'm about to write a Brian scene, lol!) I don't know if this is WADD or what, but I'm just trying to go where the inspiration takes me. I guess I wish I was making a little more headway on either PDemons or the novella because I'd like to have something to consistently post once PNecklace is finished (and obviously I can't post OF PBox), but I'm just happy to still be writing consistently even if I can't necessarily post consistently (yet... I'd rather not post for a while than post and leave anyone hanging).
That's awesome that you wrote so much though! It sounds like letting the streak taper off and having the pallet cleanser of 00Carter brought back some inspiration! :party:
I think I forgot to mention it earlier, but congrats on finishing Take Me Home, Tracy! I'm glad you found your inspiration for the ending.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 01:01:20 AM ---For those who write in Google Docs, what's the longest story you've written as one doc without breaking it up?
I'm up to 287 pages/113,448 words in MBK, and it's definitely getting slow to load, especially on my Chromebook. Tonight I was typing, and it suddenly froze up, and when it unfroze, it had erased the entire story except the two words I was trying to type. 😳 I must have accidentally hit the keyboard shortcut for Select All or something. Thank god for the undo button and version history. I was able to get it back by undoing, but it scared me for a second. I would rather keep the whole story in one document as I'm writing it then start a new doc, but I may have to break it up if it keeps glitching and getting slower. The longest story I've written solely in Google Docs was A Heart That Isn't Mine, and that one was already divided into "parts" of ten chapters, so I just made each part its own doc until I was done with the story and then combined them all into one. But this one doesn't have that natural division point. I guess this will be an experiment for me to see how long I will let it get before I feel like I have to break it up because I still have a ways to go. That is one thing I like about Word better - it works well even with super long documents. Broken, BMS, and Song for the Undead can't even fit into one Google Doc; I had to upload them in parts to Google Drive because it couldn't handle documents that size LOL.
--- End quote ---
OMG, this is my nightmare! I'm glad you were able to recover it because I would have curled up on the floor and sobbed uncontrollably before I even tried to find a solution. At least Google Docs has version mode, because remember when Word would do weird things and then be like "there's not a saved version of this, muahahahaha!"? Thinking about that gives me anxiety.
I'm impressed you keep such long stories together. I get annoyed at how slow they run and specifically break the story up into ten chapter chunks. Which is usually around one hundred pages. The ones that are more than 100 pages still get slow, but they're better than if the whole story was together. I actually had to break the last ten chapters of PBox into two sets of five because of how many pages they were already and how much editing I did -- docs just didn't have the capacity for more edits (I think it's a certain number of characters in all saved versions, but I can't remember how many it is... More than most people need, but it adds up if you keep editing an already long novel.).
Right now I have the OF version of PBox in a chapter by chapter document and that's weirder than ten chapter chunks, I think. But it's also helped because I've completely rewritten (or planned to complete rewrite) the first three chapters twice now, so I have a full document of the first version and a full document of the second version to scrutinize.
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 01:18:12 PM ---That's awesome that you're feeling inspired to write in the mornings! I'm too much of a useless human to write pre-coffee.
--- End quote ---
LOL Same here. When I write in the mornings, whether it's while getting ready for work or in bed on the weekends, it's always WHILE drinking coffee. The more coffee I've consumed prior to beginning, the better it will go.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 01:18:12 PM ---Same! I skipped Friday because of work/the football game, but Saturday I started going back to work on PDemons and was writing a little conversation between Nick and Howie where Howie talked about how Nick used to skulk around the palace, sitting on ledges to watch people below him and I nearly died laughing thinking about it. So I decided I wanted to add a scene in the beginning of the OF version of PBox where Nick did just that... but I had to write part of the chapter before it to do so. Anyway, I spent a good two hours painstakingly deciding on a new name for Howie, since I couldn't keep writing "["Howie"]" if it was the chapter where he revealed his name (and actually ended up picking Brian's new name during the process as well). Then I ended up writing a little over 6200 words Saturday evening to Sunday night (and sleeping of course). But good news, this means I'm about one chapter and four scenes away from having the first eight chapters of the OF version done or... some semblance of penned anyway.
This has been happening to me a lot lately, actually. I ended up finishing my Brian chapter of my novella because I was trying to get into the groove for my Brian scene in 00Carter. (Is this a spoiler? I'm sorry! I'm about to write a Brian scene, lol!) I don't know if this is WADD or what, but I'm just trying to go where the inspiration takes me. I guess I wish I was making a little more headway on either PDemons or the novella because I'd like to have something to consistently post once PNecklace is finished (and obviously I can't post OF PBox), but I'm just happy to still be writing consistently even if I can't necessarily post consistently (yet... I'd rather not post for a while than post and leave anyone hanging).
--- End quote ---
Wow, sounds like you had a productive weekend too! Care to share the names you picked out for OF Howie and Brian, or do you want to keep it a secret until it gets published?
Sounds like there's some kind of symbiotic relationship going on between your inspiration for various stories, which is cool! The flitting around from story to story sounds like WADD, but at least you're finishing scenes and being productive. Glad to hear you're still writing consistently! Someday you'll be able to post all this stuff!
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 01:18:12 PM ---That's awesome that you wrote so much though! It sounds like letting the streak taper off and having the pallet cleanser of 00Carter brought back some inspiration! :party:
--- End quote ---
Yes! 00Carter was a nice break from the drama of MBK (even though it was still dramatic in its own right), but it's also been nice to get back into my groove on MBK. The scene I wrote yesterday was one I had been looking forward to for a long time, so I was glad to have the time and inspiration to churn it out. Today I haven't written anything because that was the last chapter I had officially outlined, so I spent some time brainstorming and outlined the next six chapters instead.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 01:18:12 PM ---OMG, this is my nightmare! I'm glad you were able to recover it because I would have curled up on the floor and sobbed uncontrollably before I even tried to find a solution. At least Google Docs has version mode, because remember when Word would do weird things and then be like "there's not a saved version of this, muahahahaha!"? Thinking about that gives me anxiety.
I'm impressed you keep such long stories together. I get annoyed at how slow they run and specifically break the story up into ten chapter chunks. Which is usually around one hundred pages. The ones that are more than 100 pages still get slow, but they're better than if the whole story was together. I actually had to break the last ten chapters of PBox into two sets of five because of how many pages they were already and how much editing I did -- docs just didn't have the capacity for more edits (I think it's a certain number of characters in all saved versions, but I can't remember how many it is... More than most people need, but it adds up if you keep editing an already long novel.).
Right now I have the OF version of PBox in a chapter by chapter document and that's weirder than ten chapter chunks, I think. But it's also helped because I've completely rewritten (or planned to complete rewrite) the first three chapters twice now, so I have a full document of the first version and a full document of the second version to scrutinize.
--- End quote ---
Yes! I definitely had a moment of panic before I remembered I was using Google Docs and that it should be recoverable even if I had to close out of the doc because it was being glitchy. Thankfully, I didn't even have to do that. But after such a productive writing day, it was terrifying to watch all that work suddenly vanish LOL. I definitely had that experience of losing whole scenes or chapters on Word and having to rewrite them. I learned to save my work frequently!
That's what I did with AHTIM, ten-chapter chunks. And with SAMS, which I started in Word and then switched to Docs partway through, I only wrote the new chapters in Docs and then copied and pasted them into my Word doc of the whole story once they were posted. I prefer to have the whole story in one document so I can look back and find stuff in previous chapters without having to open a bunch of different files. (I frequently use Find and Replace to make sure I'm not repeating exact phrases and descriptions.) It was okay with Heroic Measures and Bethlehem because they were shorter, but MBK is going to be closer to 50 chapters like AHTIM, so at some point I think it's going to get too slow and glitchy for me to stand it. I'll let you know when that time comes LOL.
That does sound helpful to have first and second versions of each chapter of your OF PBox. I could see doing it that way for a novel I was trying to get published because there is so much more revision required there.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 06:34:42 PM ---LOL Same here. When I write in the mornings, whether it's while getting ready for work or in bed on the weekends, it's always WHILE drinking coffee. The more coffee I've consumed prior to beginning, the better it will go.
--- End quote ---
The rate I'm going, I don't get to finish my coffee until 1pm, so morning writing is not an option, lol. Except on weekends; I can write and drink my coffee for the most part. We'll see how that goes with football season.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 06:34:42 PM ---Wow, sounds like you had a productive weekend too! Care to share the names you picked out for OF Howie and Brian, or do you want to keep it a secret until it gets published?
--- End quote ---
It's a secret, but I'll share the process. ;) I think it took me so long to pick a name because I was both going through my list of names to find one I liked and trying to find one that could fit Howie (and Brian/Kevin/AJ). Something like "Yeah, sure, in an alternate universe, Howie could be named Richard." But he can't. He's Howie. And that's when I started thinking, "Well, I have this completely made up language. Maybe I can make up names for them in this made up language instead and maybe it's the act of being given a human nickname that's endearing to these demons, rather than just having a nickname for an already human name."
So I went through my dictionary first to see if I could come up with anything in this language that would sound like root words that names could be derived from and sounded like "Nickolas." Because I figured that if I couldn't get that, then I should stick to the original plan. The "Nick" part was easy, I'd found something I liked a while ago that I mentioned before. And luckily I stumbled on an r-sound word that I loved with it (no words that start with "l" in the language though). And it being meaningful in the idea that his family would have picked it because it meant that made sense with his backstory, where it wouldn't really for other kids (real or fictional). Like there's no kids wandering around like "Oh, I know, it's crazy that my parents named me 'A Football Player' and I actually play football," lol (in real life, that kid is an accountant).
So deciding it could be done, I more generically went over names I liked and figured out the common threads in their root words. Things like "guard," "noble," "ruler," "peace," "gift," etcetera. Then picked combinations I liked for the characters and mashed them together until they made sense as a name and could make someone go "well this human name sounds sort of like that" and go with it. Although I figure "Kevin" would be the type to be like "Absolutely not, my name is Aowgeroigiorod and you will address me as such." (That was a keyboard smash, I haven't picked a "Kevin" or "AJ" name yet.) "Brian" and "AJ" would both be hesitant at first, given their roles in the story. "Howie" would adore being called anything besides "Your Majesty" or what have you. And Nick prompts it in the first place (something like "If it's hard to pronounce, call me whatever."); he's just happy that someone is talking to him, lol.
It was a process, but overall I'm happy with the choice. It just means that they all have kind of long names with syllable structure and what not.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 06:34:42 PM ---Sounds like there's some kind of symbiotic relationship going on between your inspiration for various stories, which is cool! The flitting around from story to story sounds like WADD, but at least you're finishing scenes and being productive. Glad to hear you're still writing consistently! Someday you'll be able to post all this stuff!
--- End quote ---
That's kind of why I figured I'd keep doing it. As long as I'm actually getting through scenes and chapters in some aspect, then there's progress being made. That's pretty much what I used to do with PNecklace/PDemons anyway, just write what felt fun. OF PBox is a little different because it's some new writing, but then a lot of rewriting the same thing in a different way. And then deciding that the chapter should go in a different place and then rewriting everything around it. And then thinking of something new to write and adding that in or replace something else with it. And... it goes on, lol. But the good news is, two characters who were originally the Boys have now been introduced and it doesn't feel too Backstreety. I did catch myself writing "More than that, [rest of sentence]" once and couldn't decide if that was Backstreety or not, lol.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 06:34:42 PM ---Yes! 00Carter was a nice break from the drama of MBK (even though it was still dramatic in its own right), but it's also been nice to get back into my groove on MBK. The scene I wrote yesterday was one I had been looking forward to for a long time, so I was glad to have the time and inspiration to churn it out. Today I haven't written anything because that was the last chapter I had officially outlined, so I spent some time brainstorming and outlined the next six chapters instead.
--- End quote ---
Yay! I'm glad one of your "looking forward to it" scenes ended up aligning with time and inspiration! I'm glad you're back in your groove too. I know the end of the streak was sentence-by-sentence. That's crazy that you made it to the end of your official outlining. How many more do you think are past these six? And does your outline past that exist? Is more like my "At the end, there's a ____ and blank happens ____" notes? lol
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on September 06, 2021, 06:34:42 PM ---Yes! I definitely had a moment of panic before I remembered I was using Google Docs and that it should be recoverable even if I had to close out of the doc because it was being glitchy. Thankfully, I didn't even have to do that. But after such a productive writing day, it was terrifying to watch all that work suddenly vanish LOL. I definitely had that experience of losing whole scenes or chapters on Word and having to rewrite them. I learned to save my work frequently!
That's what I did with AHTIM, ten-chapter chunks. And with SAMS, which I started in Word and then switched to Docs partway through, I only wrote the new chapters in Docs and then copied and pasted them into my Word doc of the whole story once they were posted. I prefer to have the whole story in one document so I can look back and find stuff in previous chapters without having to open a bunch of different files. (I frequently use Find and Replace to make sure I'm not repeating exact phrases and descriptions.) It was okay with Heroic Measures and Bethlehem because they were shorter, but MBK is going to be closer to 50 chapters like AHTIM, so at some point I think it's going to get too slow and glitchy for me to stand it. I'll let you know when that time comes LOL.
That does sound helpful to have first and second versions of each chapter of your OF PBox. I could see doing it that way for a novel I was trying to get published because there is so much more revision required there.
--- End quote ---
Thank goodness. The worst was when the computer froze while you were trying to save. I've shouted "NOOOOOO!!!!!" at my computer more times that I can remember, lol.
Mine would have been chapter ten, lol. I get wanting to find/replace. I just deal with opening the however many documents. I know you hate tabs though. Right now I have 20 open and my laptop is fine; it's apparently great at multitasking. I wonder what page it takes until a document gets unbearable and too slow to function. Or if it's more of a computer thing.
I figured it was better to have it as is if I ever changed my mind and wanted to go back to it. Even though it means that I have a million documents with the same chapter.
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 09:08:14 PM ---It's a secret, but I'll share the process. ;)
It was a process, but overall I'm happy with the choice. It just means that they all have kind of long names with syllable structure and what not.
--- End quote ---
That makes sense. Sounds interesting! I'm glad to hear you were able to come up with some that sounded like human names. I know as a reader, I'm okay with made-up names, but it helps if they're something I can pronounce and don't stumble over each time I come to them. Good luck coming up with them for Kevin and AJ!
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 09:08:14 PM ---But the good news is, two characters who were originally the Boys have now been introduced and it doesn't feel too Backstreety. I did catch myself writing "More than that, [rest of sentence]" once and couldn't decide if that was Backstreety or not, lol.
--- End quote ---
Out of context, I don't think anyone would see the phrase "more than that" and automatically think "Backstreet Boys." We BSB fans might, but that's the fun of it. It's like a little Easter egg. I say keep it!
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 09:08:14 PM ---Yay! I'm glad one of your "looking forward to it" scenes ended up aligning with time and inspiration! I'm glad you're back in your groove too. I know the end of the streak was sentence-by-sentence. That's crazy that you made it to the end of your official outlining. How many more do you think are past these six? And does your outline past that exist? Is more like my "At the end, there's a ____ and blank happens ____" notes? lol
--- End quote ---
The rest of my outline is a timeline that includes real events in BSB history that I can tie into the story and a bulleted list of ideas I'm planning to include at some point, but don't know what chapter they'll be in yet. I've planned through Chapter 32 now, but I'm guessing it will be closer to 50 chapters.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on September 06, 2021, 09:08:14 PM ---Mine would have been chapter ten, lol. I get wanting to find/replace. I just deal with opening the however many documents. I know you hate tabs though. Right now I have 20 open and my laptop is fine; it's apparently great at multitasking. I wonder what page it takes until a document gets unbearable and too slow to function. Or if it's more of a computer thing.
I figured it was better to have it as is if I ever changed my mind and wanted to go back to it. Even though it means that I have a million documents with the same chapter.
--- End quote ---
I do hate having too many tabs open at the time. I usually have one for music, one for my story, one or two for research, and sometimes one for a chat/forum/social media, depending on how focused I'm being. I can't stand much more than that.
That's probably a good idea to save the different versions until you're sure you're happy with one. Even then, it might be fun to have old versions to look back at to see how much it's changed. There's a part of me that does regret deleting the original versions of AHTIM, for example. I should have just thrown them in a different folder and kept them.
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